Newt Gingrich emerged the winner in a Sunday night straw poll of tea party voters after he and three other Republican presidential candidates courted more than 23,000 activists during a tele-forum sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots coalition. Gingrich won with 31% of the vote. Second place went to Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who won 28%. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won 20%, and former Sen. Rick Santorum won 16%. All four participated in a pre-poll call with activists, in which they each spent 10 minutes responding to questions from participants and gave a 90-second closing pitch for support.

Finally, a small cadre of busybody bureaucrats has discovered a way to bring this divided country together. Thank you, IRS, for pulling off what no politician has been able to do. Mortal political enemies on both sides of the aisle agree: The IRS badly misstepped when it singled out for scrutiny groups with the words “tea party” and “patriots” in their names who had applied for tax-exempt status. That is a Nixon-worthy no-no. Regardless of whether this practice simply represented a shortcut in the agency's larger effort to evaluate the flood of applications for tax-exempt status in 2010 and 2011, as the agency maintains, it's a ham-fisted way of doing business.

It always helps to show up. Republican Herman Cain, a former chief executive of Godfather Pizza and the only declared candidate of either party for the 2012 presidential election, won a straw poll Sunday among "tea-party" supporters at a weekend policy summit in Phoenix. Cain was one of the weekend's most popular speakers. Two other presumed candidates who showed up -- U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty -- placed second and third. But the event's sponsor, Tea Party Patriots, also released separate results for online voting.

December 17, 2012 | By Melanie Mason and Michael A. Memoli, This post has been updated, as indicated below.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Tim Scott, a freshman tea party Republican, will become South Carolina's first black senator, Gov. Nikki Haley, announced Monday, appointing the congressman to fill the seat left vacant by Jim DeMint. "It is a great day for South Carolina," Haley said, speaking at the statehouse in Columbia. "It is a historic day for South Carolina. " Haley was joined by Scott and DeMint, as well as the state's senior senator, Lindsey Graham, and members of its congressional delegation.

A national "tea party" group is trying to hold Republican lawmakers' feet to the fire on the budget just as leaders from both parties prepare to crank up negotiations on a deal to avoid a government shutdown early next month. Tea Party Patriots, an umbrella group that links local tea parties online, says it will organize a rally at the Capitol next week to express frustration with GOP politicians whom its activists helped elect. In an email to supporters sent Wednesday, the group claims that Republicans are not making good on their promise to dig deep into the budget and are poised to cave to Democrats on spending.

NPR is distancing itself from remarks made by a fund-raising executive who said the American "tea party" movement is a comprised of "white, middle-America gun-toting" and "seriously racist, racist" people. The comments, apparently made by Ron Schiller, NPR's exiting vice president for development, were recorded in a "sting" set up by conservative activist James O'Keefe, best known for mounting a similar prank on ACORN. They came as part of a recent lunch in Washington Schiller had with two men posing as members of the "Muslim Action Education Center," a fictitious organization the men claimed had ties to the "Muslim Brotherhood of America.

Sarah Palin -- remember her? -- says she won't make an endorsement in the GOP race just yet. But it sounds like there's one candidate who could earn her support: Newt Gingrich. The former Alaska governor, who waited until October to announce she would not be a candidate in the 2012 race, told Fox Business Network that Gingrich has "been a bit more successful" than Mitt Romney in courting party activists. "He has been engaged in that movement most recently in order for them to hear his solutions and there's been some forgiveness then on the part of Tea Party Patriots for some of the things in Gingrich's past," she said, according to an advanced transcript of the interview provided by the network.

Sen. John McCain on Wednesday took on conservatives reluctant to raise the national debt ceiling, calling them "tea party hobbits" and saying that if they reject the House Republican plan, they will help reelect President Obama. At times reading from a Wall Street Journal editorial during his floor speech, the Arizona Republican also ridiculed Democrats, saying Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's plan is "full of smoke and mirrors. " But he directed the most biting sarcasm at his own party.

Budget talks continued Thursday on a compromise that would avoid a federal government shutdown, even as "tea party" protesters gathered outside the Capitol, urging Republicans not to stray from the $61 billion in cuts already approved by the House. A tentative deal would result in cuts of about half that -- $33 billion in cutbacks in one of the largest onetime reductions in domestic government programs. But House Speaker John Boehner insisted Thursday that Republicans had not agreed to that level of reductions.

Herman Cain won a presidential straw poll at a "tea-party" event in Phoenix over the weekend which brings up an obvious follow-up question: Who in blazes is Herman Cain? Other than one of the few Republicans to actually have declared outright his interest in his party's presidential nomination, Cain, 65, is the former chief executive officer of Godfather's Pizza, and he worked as a conservative radio host in Atlanta for years. The "Hermanator" has become a tea-party favorite through his advocacy of, among other things, the so-called Fair Tax, which would eliminate the federal tax code in favor of a national consumption tax on retail sales.

Newt Gingrich emerged the winner in a Sunday night straw poll of tea party voters after he and three other Republican presidential candidates courted more than 23,000 activists during a tele-forum sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots coalition. Gingrich won with 31% of the vote. Second place went to Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who won 28%. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won 20%, and former Sen. Rick Santorum won 16%. All four participated in a pre-poll call with activists, in which they each spent 10 minutes responding to questions from participants and gave a 90-second closing pitch for support.

Sarah Palin -- remember her? -- says she won't make an endorsement in the GOP race just yet. But it sounds like there's one candidate who could earn her support: Newt Gingrich. The former Alaska governor, who waited until October to announce she would not be a candidate in the 2012 race, told Fox Business Network that Gingrich has "been a bit more successful" than Mitt Romney in courting party activists. "He has been engaged in that movement most recently in order for them to hear his solutions and there's been some forgiveness then on the part of Tea Party Patriots for some of the things in Gingrich's past," she said, according to an advanced transcript of the interview provided by the network.

Throughout the roller-coaster Republican presidential contest, one thing hasn't changed: the stubborn refusal of many tea party supporters to warm up to Mitt Romney. The swift rise and abrupt fall of a succession of GOP candidates has been driven in part by the restless search for a Romney alternative by that group of voters, who energized the GOP's big turnaround in 2010. "They don't trust Mitt Romney," said Simon Conway, a Des Moines radio host popular with tea party followers.

As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to spread - with massive arrests Monday night in Boston - the tea party wants you to know that the progressive protests have nothing in common with its own grass-roots effort. First, the arrests: About 100 people were arrested by police Monday evening in Boston, according to local news affiliates, after they refused to leave an off-limits area outside of the Dewey Square section of the city. Local representatives of the intentionally disorganized movement said the police overreacted.

As stocks continued Monday to tumble in the wake of Standard & Poor's downgrade of the United States' credit rating, Democrats are working to place the blame for the move squarely on the shoulders of the "tea party" movement. David Axelrod, a top campaign advisor to President Obama, led the charge over the weekend, calling S&P's action “essentially a tea party downgrade.” “The tea party brought us to the brink of default,” Axelrod said. “It was the right thing to do to avoid that default.

Sen. John McCain on Wednesday took on conservatives reluctant to raise the national debt ceiling, calling them "tea party hobbits" and saying that if they reject the House Republican plan, they will help reelect President Obama. At times reading from a Wall Street Journal editorial during his floor speech, the Arizona Republican also ridiculed Democrats, saying Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's plan is "full of smoke and mirrors. " But he directed the most biting sarcasm at his own party.

With a government shutdown deadline just days away, House Speaker John A. Boehner faces a fateful choice over whether to abandon conservative Republicans to reach a final deal on 2011 spending. If he puts the priority on GOP unity, he could force a shutdown that many strategists believe could be costly to his party. But if he goes for a deal with Democrats, the decision has the potential to splinter the new Republican majority in the House. Either way, the choice could define his leadership.

As nearly 100 new Republican lawmakers settle into their Capitol Hill digs this week, some will get a pop-in visit ? before the boxes are unpacked and the phones start ringing ? aimed at reminding them how they got there. "We want them to know that we know our folks helped them get elected and we're there for them," said Mark Meckler, whose group, Tea Party Patriots, is sending activists to visit lawmakers' offices hours after the swearing-in Wednesday of the 112th Congress. It's a pointed reminder for the new class, roughly half of which was elected with "tea party" support or echoed the movement's call for smaller government.

Budget talks continued Thursday on a compromise that would avoid a federal government shutdown, even as "tea party" protesters gathered outside the Capitol, urging Republicans not to stray from the $61 billion in cuts already approved by the House. A tentative deal would result in cuts of about half that -- $33 billion in cutbacks in one of the largest onetime reductions in domestic government programs. But House Speaker John Boehner insisted Thursday that Republicans had not agreed to that level of reductions.

With a government shutdown deadline just days away, House Speaker John A. Boehner faces a fateful choice over whether to abandon conservative Republicans to reach a final deal on 2011 spending. If he puts the priority on GOP unity, he could force a shutdown that many strategists believe could be costly to his party. But if he goes for a deal with Democrats, the decision has the potential to splinter the new Republican majority in the House. Either way, the choice could define his leadership.